Part 7: The Lower Level, Outremont, And St. Laurent Rooms
A symphony of spectacular high-fidelity sound!
Montreal Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

St. Laurent Rooms
S1 & S2  EARVANA & Marketplace
I retraced my steps back down the hallway to the large room created by joining St. Laurent 1 and 2. In the past, this has been primarily a marketplace with LP sellers and vendors with silent displays. The prominence of headphones in recent years has led Sarah Tremblay and Michel Plante to organize EARVANA as a central location for headphone technology. They tried this first at the Toronto Audiofest last October. As we've seen earlier, not everybody has joined in this effort, as it takes extra staff to cover EARVANA if you also have a room with a traditional stereo presentation elsewhere in the show.

As I entered EARVANA, the large area devoted to Sennheiser dominated the room.

Sennheiser had arranged long upholstered bench seating with long cocktail tables, each filled with two amplifiers equipped with two sets of headphones. If you were there at the right moment, you had lots to choose from.

Other times, or at other tables, you had to wait your turn to hear a certain product. And people tended to take a long time to evaluate headphones. Sunday is usually the best day to listen to headphones, as attendance drops compared to Fridays and Saturdays.

Canopee Audio had a nice display of their finely crafted racks and amp stands, which are available in different thicknesses and stains. This is the company that had the fine racks in the Audiolight And Marchand Audio Video room in Part 6. Being a small company, I expect he would do custom work if you have special needs.

There were not as many LP vendors this year... far less than at Axpona or Capital Audiofest. I didn't catch a name for this particular seller. If I had noticed the Philip Glass divider, I would have taken a closer look here. Maybe this was the Foire du Vinyle listed in the program?

Focal / Naim had very nice kiosks with a Focal headphone and a Naim streamer set up on each of the four sides. Data with QR codes was posted at each station, and there was a handy hook to hang the headphones when you were finished listening. The lack of seating encouraged folks not to listen too long — a situation that can be problematic on busier days.

The Focal room dividers also held video screens with messaging that included special show pricing that encouraged people to buy on the spot.

Distributor Motet and manufacturer FiiO teamed up for a very nice display that featured listening stations with upholstered seating. Enjoy the Music.com has reviewed FiiO products and found them a great value with exceptional sound quality.

I'm not sure these were connected with Motet as they featured Eversolo streamers and amps. The Librairie Resonance Bookstore had a long table with lots of reading material relating to music, but it seems most people were into the gear.

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